Old game, new rules

Lee Carsley makes a splash - but rainclouds loom.

By the popular demand of exactly no-one, Tom Curren’s England column is now a fixture.

The Barclaysmen are everywhere.

The children yearn for a time when football was simpler. Match of the Day on early Sunday mornings, when the parents sleep in. Rockets from forty yards, shin-pads the size of Bibles, Nike Total 90’s. Football is not the same these days. We miss the beauty, the pure. No more positionism, no more chess games. Take us back.

Set amongst this deluge of montages were Lee Carsley’s first games as England’s ‘interim’ (c’mon) manager. Such games are difficult to write about, conclusions difficult to draw. It’s so early, it’s so easy. With respect, Ireland and Finland, what could we possibly learn? This is a team that will be judged by fall of the ultimate gavel. England, engraved on gold, or nothing.

The only thing we can be sure of is a change in feeling. Something ethereal, emotional - like the Barclaysmen instinct football used to be better. Hold Carsley’s first games up against the sum of Gareth Southgate’s eight years, juxtapose these asymmetrical eras, what are we left with? An unnerving sense of England finally being in sensible hands.